A woman whose Birmingham-born mum was murdered by her vicious father who then took her to his native Yemen and sold her to a violent rapist has told her horrifying story.

Gaby Gillespie now 50, suffered almost 20 years of abuse at the hands of a violent man while one of her sisters took her own life and her killer father turned on her with a shotgun.

But now that her father is dead and she and her children are safe in Britain she has decided to tell her story in the hope it may save even one girl from suffering the same fate.

Brave Gaby said: “It was a huge decision to finally tell my story. I think it was a story that needs to be told – not just what happened to us, me and my sisters, but anybody that’s gone through it or thinks they may be at risk of going through it needs to start speaking out if this practice is ever going to be eliminated.”

“She also said she heard a fight going on, sounds like furniture being thrown against the walls, then she said it went silent.

“A little while later she said she heard scrubbing sounds coming from our kitchen. She also told how she saw Dad and two men carry out a big rolled up carpet later that night and load it into Dad’s meat van.”

Her father was found guilty of manslaughter and sentenced to six years in prison, of which he served four.

When Ali Yafai came out of prison his daughters, who believed he was innocent, moved back with him before he told them they were going to the country of his birth, the Yemen, for a holiday.

In May 1977 Ali took three of his daughters to his home country, which he had told them was a magical place where fruit would fall out of the trees into their hands.

The reality was very different as Issy, Yas and Gaby were sold off by their father to older men.

One of Gaby’s sisters, Issy, resorted to suicide to avoid marrying a 60-year-old man.

Issy tried to take an overdose and then cut her wrists but each time she was stopped. She finally succeeded by jumping off the roof of a building before anyone could stop her.

Gaby describes the way the girls’ spirits were crushed by their experiences and their subservient positions to their husbands.

She said of her sister Yas, who suffered several miscarriages: “The strong argumentative tomboy sister I once had disappeared the day she got married and continued to fade with every child that she lost.

“My sister had no energy to fight for anything anymore – she was just surviving.”

Gaby suffered horrific abuse, and described the aftermath of one beating: “When I finally came around [he] had left me on the floor, soaked in my own blood.

“I lay there for what seemed like forever looking up at the ceiling, my mind blank from any thought, unable to and not wanting to move.

“I finally picked myself up and quietly made my way into the bathroom, closing the door behind me so not to wake the children as I sat in the shower and washed away the blood that covered my whole body.”

Her father also attacked her and her children and at one point brandished a shotgun and told her: “Today I’m going to kill you the same way I killed your mother.”

It was only after getting help from the British Embassy that Gaby was able to escape the Yemen and come home to the UK at the end of August in 1992.

Gaby said her five children – Taz, 34, Justina, 32, Adam, 30, Sandy, 29 and Luke, 26 – make her feel “blessed”.

Gaby has worked as a foster carer and as a bouncer but is now a full-time carer for her son who is disabled.

Of her father she said: “I don’t think I can ever come to terms with what he did to me and my sisters. We found out some things he’d done when we were children we never knew.

“I think I forgive him for what he did to me. I’ll never forgive him for what he did to my mother and my sisters – it’s not my place to do that.

“I could never understand how anybody could do that to their children.

“It was his culture, his traditions – I do believe he knew somewhat it was wrong.”